Improving the background system

March 25, 2013

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So much of what we do in urban planning and design is facilitated by ‘the system’ of rules used to regulate urban space. These rules establish the frameworks in which we work, even while we exercise our personal professional judgements on a daily basis. This provides plenty of benefits, such as relative certainty that core procedures are followed, as in planning scheme amendment

or rezoning processes, or in the steps of permit or development assessment processes being

followed.

These processes also establish a range of rules for decisions so that, generally speaking, we know who will make decisions about the various things that we are seeking to ‘do’ in urban and regional places, and the general criteria regarding how those decision are to be made. We would hope that these rules establish both minimum standards for the qualities of urban places, and set aspirations for achievement so that we can seek improvement over time.

The problem with these complex systems of rules is that it becomes uncertain at a point whether they are actually delivering what we actually want – as groups of people living in places, and as built environment professionals responsible for helping to create, maintain and improve those places. The cause of this problem is that planning and urban design processes derive their force and moral justification from within governance and collective action processes. At some point, the rules take on a life of their own and, whatever role we play, we realise that we need to play

to the success criteria of the regulations to get our project through.

The trouble is that our day to day use of ‘the rules’ strongly discourages us from questioning and improving these systems. On a site-by-site or project-by-project basis, playing to the rules is a rational and indeed successful way to work as a professional: it’s no use proposing a project that has little chance of success. However, when this becomes the main way that we all work across our expanding cities and regions, the defining feature of our built environment professions – spatiality – is lost. To use one example, we are now facing the prospect across Australia of increasing spatial inequity in the long-term, in terms of income, education access, public transport access, health outcomes, and quality of life measures. It is deeply troubling thatplanning and design systems do not provide pathways to remedy this.

So why is this happening? This dearth of maintaining a spatial outlook can be explained by the apparatus for higher-tier urban planning having been progressively dismantled since the 1980s across Australia. In parallel, urban planning has been reduced to being an enabling mechanism, rather than being a true forward planning instrument. With occasional exceptions, key agencies for things such as water, state roads, public transport, and major projects are increasingly autonomous and separate. The achievement of planning responsibilities occurs not just through the formal bodies and agencies of planning but, of course, via markets as a driving force for

change and improvement. The outcome is a planning system that lacks strength in the fundamental feature that defines planning – spatial control and influence to improve

outcomes.

Urban design is not the complete solution to this problem, but it does offer some key elements required to turn this problem around. Where current urban planning decision-making rarely delivers a sound evidence base for policy directions or changes, good urban design can establish visions of the future at a scale and functionality that people can understand and relate to. Good urban design establishes the ways that a place is meant to function: in terms of transport, interactions between land uses, structures and open spaces; and how this would relate to achievement of wider goals.

Overall, I argue that the knowledge base for justifying planning and urban design decisions is lacking, and also lacking are ways to harness spatial knowledge so that we know the individual and incremental changes ‘add up’ to the things we want in our communities. The solution is to develop better rule systems that require us to demonstrate the functional contributions that urban design and planning makes. The implication is that we, as professionals, need to provide an active voice outside of current government and the development sector to improve decision